A steam trap is an automatic valve which automatically drains and removes condensate from steam lines of steam-utilizing equipment of a plant without permitting steam to escape from the lines. If any one of such steam traps fails to operate normally, for example, when steam leaks through the steam trap or the valve becomes inoperative, the efficiency of the plant decreases and, in some cases, the entire plant malfunctions. It is, therefore, important to periodically inspect and evaluate individual steam traps to maintain the steam-utilizing equipment.
In general, steam-utilizing equipment includes a large number of steam traps, and evaluation of them requires a great deal of work and time, and, hence, great cost. Furthermore, in order to make the inspection, evaluation and maintenance of steam traps reliable, information on the equipment, including the results of the evaluation of individual steam traps, should be centrally managed so that operating states of the individual steam traps as part of the entire equipment can be determined.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an equipment inspection and evaluation system which can efficiently inspect and evaluate individual devices forming parts of equipment, e.g. steam traps of steam-utilizing equipment.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an equipment management system which can reliably and efficiently manage information about individual devices, e.g. steam traps, including results of evaluation made by the equipment inspection and evaluation system.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a record medium with an equipment management program stored therein for use in realizing a computerized equipment management system.